Sunday, 4 April 2010

one and the other or both?


“In the production of wealth personal abilities are employed in two radically different ways, and in the distribution of wealth they receive two radically different kinds of income. The labourer deals directly with the forces and materials of nature, and produces utilities by changing the places of things. The entrepreneur organises the labourers. He does not deal directly with nature, but with society. The labourer takes few risks. He is conservative. He works along accustomed and approved lines. The entrepreneur is the speculating, progressive, organising, inventive, economising agent of industry. He undertakes the management and assumes the risks of business. He is the pioneer of industry. He marshals and controls all the other factors. He looks out for opportunities for profitable investments, and then enlists capital, labour, and land in the supply- ing of human wants. He contracts with the repre- sentatives of the other elements for their services at a stipulated price, and then he takes the risk of obtaining for their united efforts a surplus of value above his stipulated payments. Thus labour receives a stipulated payment, — wages, — and the entrepreneur receives a contingent surplus, — profits. [...] The entrepreneur is peculiarly the creature of a stage of industry where production is carried on, not for the immediate use of the producers, but for sale and profit. He is the middleman between producers and consumers. He organises the producers and purchases their combined product, and then sells this product for what he can get for it.”
COMMONS John R., The Distribution of Wealth, New York: McMillan, 1893, pp.171-172

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